


Thoughts on the Voice

by Marijane_Akuma



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos is Mentioned (Welcome to Night Vale), Existentialism, Night Vale, The Void, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, ramblings and musings on the town, the town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:21:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marijane_Akuma/pseuds/Marijane_Akuma
Summary: Maybe Cecil has authority standing over him because he put them there, when he was still just Night Vale.





	Thoughts on the Voice

Of course everyone knows that any respectable town has a Voice, and so does Night Vale. 

And so there is Cecil.

However, it is unclear whether Cecil is the Voice of the town that’s too sentient for any interlopers that arrive, who act as if towns shouldn’t  _ have  _ Voices- or if maybe Cecil is  _ more  _ than the Voice. Maybe he is a personification of the town, or its people, or maybe even of Night Vale itself and neither town nor people matter, but a place. 

Maybe Cecil just  _ is _ .

Interlopers are weird either way, always trying to argue that cities “ _ don’t  _ ** _have _ ** _ voices _ ”, and “ _ can’t  _ ** _choose _ ** _ anything _ ”, and “ _ aren’t supposed to  _ ** _be _ ** _ sentient _ ”. Interlopers are  _ weird _ , and those that keep arguing are never accepted long by the Town anyway.

In any case, there is no arguing around the fact that Cecil is connected to Night Vale in a special way, you don’t need to accidentally go insane over questioning the  _ why  _ or  _ how _ too hard, to see that as a fact.

Then why does someone who has  _ all  _ and simultaneously  _ no  _ possible physical descriptions all at once and always never -someone so utterly  _ impossible  _ yet so real it  _ hurts _ \- have authority standing over him he has to listen to?

Station Management? City Council? The Sheriff’s Secret Police? Which of course are here for our protection, but the ( _ purely hypothetical _ ) question still stands.

Well, maybe everyone needs somebody to answer to.

You know how it is, when you lose grip on yourself. Are your own worst employee because you’re your boss and your boss is a huge pushover when it comes to you. 

Maybe Night Vale has a Voice, or a personification, or simply  _ is _ , but it also wanted to know what rules felt like. So it made up rules for itself. 

Maybe it wanted to know what it was like to be like these fascinating creatures wandering around in its desert; what these little two-legged, five-sense, one-lifespan creatures found so magnetic about its dry patch of land, with life otherwise non-sentient and so  _ small _ \- much too small to even fall into the  _ spectrum  _ of awareness of these newer, bipedal creatures yet, but of course Night Vale new of  _ all _ its creatures. 

Of course, no one with power above a human could ever  _ truly  _ understand a human - and didn’t humans just  _ love _ their rules? Their order? And more importantly, an order they could  _ comprehend  _ and  _ understand  _ and even  ** _change_ ** ? An order  _ they  _ govern, an order  _ they  _ enforce upon themselves, and order  _ they  _ replace when it fails to do its job. How could Night Vale truly understand this Need for structure? 

How could Night Vale with all the things it _knew_ and _was_ ever truly Understand that Need, that Want? Why could it ever Want for something as laughable as _comprehensible order_? A world in which it was shackled to _senses_, let alone five _limited _ones and a _meatbag _and _routines _and **_other meatbags and_**\- only aware of the things it wanted to be aware of; a world in which it understood even _fewer _things, and could control _even fewer than even_ **_that_**?   
It seemed so laughable a concept, yet the _humans _didn’t seem to think so, didn’t seem to be discontent with being human; the very few who were found other ways to fulfillment. 

It wasn’t like the humans didn’t  _ know  _ there were things out there they would never get to experience, never learn about, and never understand, things they knew  _ might  _ be happening and they would never have a way to know of them, to experience them - they knew their world was so much bigger than them, to an extent they could (probably) never comprehend. 

( _ Probably! _ Insisted this thing the humans called Hope.) 

Humans  _ knew  _ they were limited, and yet in their limitations, they never seemed…  _ limited _ . It was as if they treated their humanity as a blessing and a challenge all at once, but so very few were ever aware they were even  _ doing it _ .

Knowing they could never truly  _ See _ didn’t deter them from  _ looking _ ; knowing they could never truly  _ understand  _ didn’t stop them from questioning - quite the contrary, actually; it even motivated them to try  _ harder _ . 

Night Vale wondered what that must be like, what it must feel like, what  _ feeling  _ felt like. The humans were so  _ full  _ of feelings, some more and some less expressive about them. What was it like to experience the world clouded through a haze of chemicals? A world that was already so limited by their perception -  _ by needing perception for awareness at all? _ What was it like to experience things, and not  _ be _ them,  _ know _ them? What was it like to  _ experience _ ?

Night Vale - it wanted something. Want was new, Want was… exciting. And once it formed the Voice, it was Done.

Cecil isn’t the first Voice, and he won’t be the last. However, he is the most recent one, and the Void was sure this one was the most human-like one yet.

Cecil knows Things, but not all the  _ Things  _ Night Vale knows. He is Aware, but not more than he should be, just enough to Know, just enough to survive a little longer. He has power, holds sway over the people, over the town - but not the Town.    
He had people and entities to answer and bow to, had to sleep, to eat, to move. He experienced love, and happiness, and hatred, and frustration, and fear, and delight. He  _ felt _ things, and felt with all his heart, all his might - he experienced, discovered, learned, and questioned. 

He was sending a constant feedback to Night Vale, and sometimes Night Vale just so answered, just so he could run, hide, fight - survive a little longer, and a little longer still. To see how radios come to be, until he speaks into a microphone every day - to know settlers and their newest scientific residents.

Cecil was there, and he was the most human he could be; and finally Night Vale got a small glimpse into what it was like to be human. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote down some ramblings, and then suddenly there was an idea and I went with it - thoughts?


End file.
